


The Parting of Best Friends

by whentheynameyoujoy



Series: The Lies They Tell [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bullying, Explicit Language, F/M, Gen, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Character Death, Miscommunication, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Partnership, Pre-Relationship, Second War with Voldemort, Spy Draco Malfoy, Trust Issues, Verbal Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-02-28 05:46:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13264965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whentheynameyoujoy/pseuds/whentheynameyoujoy
Summary: To say Draco Malfoy’s new job as a spy for the Order of Phoenix was off to a rocky start would have been a massive understatement.





	1. Chapter 1

As Draco knelt on the ground, disarmed and frantically scrambling for anything that would explain how for the love of Merlin‘s nutsack he ended up in this mess, he kept coming to one disturbing conclusion: he should have listened to Hermione Granger.

Really, as unpleasant revelations went, this one was just a cherry on top of the past six weeks which had been outright filled with one arse-buggering surprise after another.

The first one, of course, came the very first night he left his base under a false pretext and Apparated to the rendezvous in Old Ormarsh, hoping to Merlin that Granger’s continued exposure to the pile of uninspired muppetry that were Potter and Weasley hadn’t made her incapable of deciphering his message and being there on time.

He’d expected a lot of different things to occur during that meeting: shouting galore, accusations flying around, past grievances being dragged up, his attempts at an explanation continuously interrupted by her refusal to listen to anything he had to say, and punctuated by open threats of revealing him to his fellow Death Eaters as a traitor. This would naturally be followed by a drawing of wands and a brief exchange of mostly reversible spells, and finally concluded by Granger either seeing sense and agreeing to his proposal, or deciding that he was too much of a risk to bother with and leaving him with his cock in his hand.

Draco had even contemplated the horrifying prospect of her breaking down in tears and demanding a shoulder to cry on.

What he most definitely hadn’t expected was for her to immediately start testing the numerous ways of handing him his own arse, and after skinning him alive send him away with barely any words exchanged.

Once he Apparated back outside the base and cast a concealment charm on his face to save himself the trouble of explaining why exactly did half of it look like it’d just been regrown, Draco had to assure himself that Granger really _did_ say yes to his offer and that no matter _how_ it happened or how little soul-baring had been needed to do it, he essentially achieved what he’d intended.

That was confirmed a day later when the fake galleon in his pocket warmed up with a new date, time, and place: 26th September, 10 p.m., Church of St. Mary, Santon Downham. As Draco began to make the necessary preparations for stealing away from the base, stuffed to the roof with fresh meat, some mid-level fighters, and a few senior leaders, he couldn’t decide whether he was more annoyed or amused by the fact that of course, Granger treated his words not to contact him unless absolutely unavoidable as that much of stinking garbage.

When he arrived at the meeting place, he was welcomed by a rather unforeseen development: the person waiting for him at the church cemetery wasn’t Hermione Granger. It was Mad-Eye Moody.

Draco’s immediate thought was to look around and make sure there was no freshly dug grave – just in case. But then he remembered he’d never actually met the real Mad-Eye Moody, and therefore the grumpy-looking man in front of him had no way of dwelling on those good old days when he would transfigure his least favourite student in Hogwarts into a bloody ferret.

Unfortunately, it turned out that when it came to impersonations, Crouch Junior deserved a First Class Order of Merlin for stunning accuracy.

Not wasting any time, Moody grabbed Draco under the arm and Apparated them deep into the nearby Thetford Forest. The deafening silence permeating the miles upon miles of empty woods did little to ease Draco’s foreboding that he was about to get fucking murdered. However, the nutter of his not-really-a-former-professor promptly informed him that he came as per Miss Granger’s request to find out whether or not Mr. Malfoy could make a trustworthy addition to the ranks of the Order, and if not, whether he could be employed in other ways.

Saying goodbye to any chance at convincing this particular tosser of his trustworthiness, Draco desperately hoped that “other ways” didn’t include being ground into Thestral feed.

Continuing, Moody barked that regardless of the result, there could be no talk of Mr. Malfoy ever meeting up with anyone who wasn’t him or Miss Granger; any hopes of getting close to Harry Potter should be left at the door at once. With that, Moody seized him by the neck and forced his mouth open, and as Draco struggled not to choke on the Veritaserum pouring down his throat, he realized with astonishment how genuinely disappointed he was that the interrogation wouldn’t be conducted by Potter and Weasley.

It was unsettling how much he’d been looking forward to seeing those two wankers again. The little bit of levity and simplicity that came with constantly trying to one up them, almost a daily occurrence back in the times when his existence could still be called normal, had been gone from his life for the past two years. On several occasions, Draco found himself sincerely missing it, especially when he considered what replaced it.

So yes, when he decided to contact Granger – after ten months spent in the nightmarish version of their school and then another month of being an active soldier for the genocidal murderer holding his mother hostage – Potter and Weasley marching over sooner or later, puffed up like a pair of overprotective trolls and seeing to it that their beloved handler would remain unharmed, seemed like a perfectly logical thing to assume.

Draco was slightly ashamed to admit that the idea made him giddy like a child on Christmas Day. He’d run the whole scenario in his head so many times he could recite each stage in his sleep, complete with individual voices.

The beginning was the least pleasant part as it had Potter and Weasley doing precisely what he hadn’t expected Granger to do: jump him, most likely tie him up, probably get a punch or two in. Draco supposed a short display of strength on their part was unavoidable considering the circumstances, and it wouldn’t do him any good to resist. A thoroughly enjoyable exchange of clever witticisms and pedestrian insults would then follow, finished by Potter tacitly acknowledging his failure to beat him in the battle of brains and addressing what Draco feared was the definitive obstacle to securing their cooperation: they weren’t buying that he would suddenly turn on Death Eaters for no obvious reason after having been one for two years, especially since handing in his membership card would mean working with his sworn enemies and actively undermining the “rubbish pureblood prejudice” he’d been championing for years.

That was the point when Draco would swallow his pride in order to actually get stuff done, and in the best approximation to the truth he could imagine himself giving them calmly and briefly explain that he’d seen the light and didn’t believe in those things anymore.

And when Weasley would inevitably snort and ask what happened, did Draco learn that he was in fact a child of Muggle parents who realized what a mistake it’d been to bring such a foul lump of buggers into the world, Draco would give him his best puppy-eyed look and deliver the final blow, politely offering to demonstrate his changed ways by shagging the dolt’s girlfriend against a tree. After all, these were dark times, and if getting Granger’s soaked knickers was what it took to prove his devotion to the cause, then Draco wasn’t above making such a sacrifice.

The look on Weasley’s face would have been so worth the sock in the nose.

When Moody finally decided to let him go after some two hours of heavy grilling, all his questions apparently answered to his satisfaction, Draco’s last thought before getting the hell out of there was that disconcertingly, there weren’t many things he was above doing when it came to Granger.

He wasn’t above calling her a mudblood when her friends were around, an ugly bushy-haired beaver when they weren’t. In his second year at Hogwarts, he had no compunction about wishing her dead. When in their fifth year Snape forced the two of them, kicking and screaming, to form a permanent study and project group due to the fact that like it or not, they _were_ the top students in his class, Draco spent a great deal of time staring daggers at her unbearably haughty mug and plotting her demise, most often by sabotaging their work or letting her do it alone, knowing full well that his own mark wouldn’t suffer for it. He pulled no punches when she finally blew up and attacked him in the library, shrieking like a banshee until Pince unceremoniously kicked both of them out.

Occasionally, he wasn’t above forgoing the arguments altogether in favour of a surprisingly companionable silence, interrupted only by comments pertaining to their current project, not to his “vomit-inducing lack of basic human decency” or the “worrying number of sticks shoved up her arse”. Sometimes, Draco didn’t mind following Granger’s lead in assignments since she really did have some interesting ideas and didn’t let a challenge frighten her away. One might have been bold enough to suggest he rather enjoyed the brainstorming sessions over what ingredient did what and which one should be included in the final recipe. There was even that one time when he let her have his last chocolate frog and laughed at her stupid joke before immediately checking himself.

Whenever Slytherin and Gryffindor had mixed classes in his seventh year, Draco would catch himself thinking how incomplete the room seemed without Granger’s know-it-all swotty self waving her hand in the air, as eager to answer the teacher’s question as she had been upon her first arrival at Hogwarts. He pondered where she was when the Muggle-Born Registration Commission was first appointed and Snatchers started roving Britain.

He wasn’t above wondering if she was safe.

And most of all, he certainly wasn’t above completely screwing her over.

When Slughorn replaced Snape as the Hogwarts Potions Master in their sixth year and cancelled the practice of studying in fixed pairs, Draco heaved a sigh of relief. Considering the task he found himself saddled with, having a best friend of Harry bloody Potter’s hanging about was the last thing he could possibly need.

Of course, that was when he learned that once something caught Granger’s attention, getting her to piss off was harder than shaking off a particularly determined pixie – and Draco’s rapidly worsening marks, erratic behaviour, sudden lack of interest in anything he used to love, be it Quidditch, using his prefect privileges to wipe the floor with Gryffindors, or finding new ways of bringing up the Weasleys’ rat-like breeding habits, definitely did catch her attention. As the school year went on and Draco grew more and more desperate with the riddle he couldn’t solve, he seemed unable to get away from Granger’s worried glances and probing questions. Between Potter being relentlessly glued to his heels, Granger ambushing him with her concern, and the vanishing cabinet just refusing to bloody work, Draco was seriously starting to wonder whether it might be a good thing that he was fully expected to fail – at least he would have some peace and quiet after death.

But as weeks turned into months and the deadline loomed closer and closer on the horizon, that notion brought him less wry amusement and more pants-shitting horror. By Christmas, Draco was losing his mind with fear, his sanity hijacked by the growing realization that he was quickly running out of options. At night, he would lie awake in bed for hours, gripped with the stone-cold certainty that he was going to die and there was fuck-all he could do about it. Bad marks became less caused by the shrinking amount of time he could devote to studying, and more by his inability to concentrate on anything that wasn’t vivid images of the Dark Lord killing him in increasingly creative ways.

One day when Draco noticed he had been staring off into space in the Slytherin common room for Merlin knew how long, silently debating the pros and cons of asking the Dark Lord for a quick end versus daring to barter for mother’s safety and in return offering himself up as grub for Death Eaters, he realized he officially lost the plot and needed help; real help, not the feel-good illusion provided by Myrtle which stopped working a long time ago. Not trusting Snape as far as he could throw him, Draco decided to instead approach the one person he once swore up and down was plonked behind his study desk just to spite him.

And so, after six months of telling her to fuck off and leave him alone, he went to talk with Hermione Granger.

Draco framed the problem as a series of isolated particulars, innocuous at first glance and most importantly impossible to connect without the crucial pieces of information he took a great care to withhold. And astonishingly, Granger agreed to lend a helping hand – not without huffing and puffing that she wasn’t at any ferret’s beck and call, but agree to it she did. Draco was so overwhelmed by relief it wasn’t hard to ignore the strange warm feeling spreading throughout his chest; a feeling completely unrelated to the sense of renewed hope that he might actually stay alive.

For the remaining four months of their school year, he was able to delude himself that their meetings in the library – once again regular, if clandestine and involving as little public interaction as possible – were precisely like their previous study sessions; the two of them would read together, discuss things together, bicker together. The veneer of normalcy greatly helped to finally calm Draco’s nerves and get his head back into the game. It really was easy, pretending that he hadn’t used a false pretence to achieve this, that he hadn’t manipulated Granger into making the impending murder of their headmaster possible. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t _lying_ to Granger to make her participate in something she’d have otherwise done her best to prevent. He may have kept a few important details to himself, but you couldn’t pin outright lying on him, no sir. Plus, nobody twisted her arm. She wasn’t obliged to waste her precious free time in the library, researching a “school project” that had nothing to do with her. Granger was simply nutty when it came to books and there was no changing that. She could have told him to stuff it anytime she wanted and Draco would have respected her decision. And since she didn’t… well, it’d have been literally suicidal of him not to reap the benefits.

In the night of the Astronomy Tower, the delusion shattered. Somewhere in those hours upon hours of research, conversations, and experiments, a hint of a solution appeared, weak and undeveloped, but undeniably there. And it worked, Merlin’s shit-coated pants, it bloody worked! But knowing that Dumbledore was outside the Hogwarts premises that evening, that he would be vulnerable upon return, that this was it, that Draco wouldn’t get another chance, that there was no getting away now, he found it impossible not to dwell on whom exactly he was bringing inside the castle. And so he met up with Granger one last time – because making sure she wouldn’t pay for her help in the one way he once claimed to welcome was the least he could do.

As Snape later dragged him away – supposedly to safety but in fact to plop him in front of a very pleased Dark Lord – Draco tried his damnedest not to think about how Granger would react once she realized what her part in all this had been.

Well, the fight in the cave gave him a pretty clear answer.

About a week after he was successfully vetted, Draco contacted Granger about a raiding mission he and several other foot soldiers were tasked with. Assuming she got a rough picture of his defection from Moody, he fully expected to be forced into a conversation he would give his right nut to avoid. There would be questions, so many questions, such a metric fuckton of nosy questions that by the end of the incessant prying he’d be ready to check into St. Mungo’s with an emergency case of brain leakage. Draco was prepared to answer some of them – more than he would have tolerated from Potter and Weasley, but nowhere near as many as Moody had gotten away with, and not as truthfully because this time, there would be no Veritaserum, no Auror experienced in sniffing out attempts at muddying the waters, and therefore no reason to forego dignity. Plus, telling the entire truth was unlikely to help matters anyway, be it by increasing Granger’s trust in him or soothing her anger. And while it was said that unburdening yourself gave a person a sense of peace, Draco would sooner buy Longbottom a butterbeer than pick _Granger_ to witness his first ever shot at emotional unguardedness and vulnerability.

But he _was_ willing to suck it up and have a relatively honest talk with her. He would share the parts which were no less true than the rest of it, but had the advantage of endearing him to her, something Draco could very much use at this point. He would tell her how he never intended to get her involved until his mind felt like a barely functional cesspool of violent fantasies and fear; that the summer after Dumbledore’s death was the worst period of his life because although the events at the Astronomy Tower may have taught him he didn’t have the stomach for killing and torture, he had to witness and take part in it anyway; how he awaited the start of his seventh year, eager to get away from his childhood home where people were being murdered under the gaze of a monster who was always _this_ close to do the same to him; how he understood, only a month into his second and now full-time stint as a Death Eater, that he couldn’t bear this anymore, that he couldn’t live the way he lived, see the horrors he saw, and do the things he did; that he had to get away if he was to keep his sanity or any sense of what it meant to be even a remotely decent person.

He would lie and claim he stopped believing in pureblood supremacy because the way Granger treated him in their sixth year made him realize Muggle-borns weren’t bad people after all.

He wouldn’t tell her that his first instinct, now and always, was to storm Malfoy Manor, grab his mother, Apparate them both to some rural shithole in Midwest, and wait the whole war out, bugger anything anyone had to say about it; that fighting for the Order openly would actually be his second preferred choice, if he were in the position to make it; that as long as it remained harmless, he still didn’t mind poking fun at other people’s heritage since it made them so delightfully angry; that he had loved everything about his previous life, and if given the choice between going back to it or to a peaceful future where his cushy spot in the wizarding society had gone to the dogs, he wouldn’t hesitate to pick the alternative where he could continue reaping the benefits of his privilege without having to think about what said privilege stood for.

Somehow, Draco had a hunch this part of the truth wouldn’t go over so well.

But that draining abortion of sharing never came. When Granger arrived at their rendezvous, expressionless and unusually business-like, they first checked that the person in front of them wasn’t an impostor hooked on Polyjuice potion. Then, she listened to his report, briefly asked about a couple of specifics, and after confirming that he didn’t have anything else to give her, Disapparated, having endured a grand total of ten minutes of work-related interaction.

Draco was left open-mouthed, like a Weasley staring at a pouch of galleons.

This… this wasn’t good.

It would have been one thing for Granger to say or even imply that she didn’t give a crap about discussing anything Moody told her, that she’d rather jam her wand in her ear than listen to Draco hem and haw his way around it, that they weren’t friends and weren’t going to be, so why not just stick to bare facts and keep the personal stuff to a minimum? If that were the case, Draco would have agreed wholeheartedly. In his mind, there was nothing to be gained from stirring a cauldron of ruined potion; you can’t uncock it, you can’t fix it, all you’re doing is stinking up the room, so just throw it away, stop dwelling on it, and move on. What did it matter whether Granger got a first-hand perspective on why exactly he took her for a ride and then decided it may not have been the wisest decision he ever made if she already heard the reasons, albeit from somebody else?

Except Draco knew for a fact that she was privy to none of them.

At the end of their meeting, Granger made the one off-hand remark she absolutely wouldn’t have made if Moody had given her the most basic of information.

“You know, seeing you where you have no business being, it sort of brings up old memories. One almost has to wonder if your father paid for your place in the Order as well."

So Granger didn’t know, she couldn’t have known. And yet she waltzed away without demanding an explanation, as if Draco was some homeless tosser hanging around the Knockturn Alley, begging for knuts and as appealing as a sploshing bucket of Hagrid’s shit.

It didn’t make any bloody sense. This wasn’t just an issue of Granger acting out of character and ceasing to be… well, Granger, with her undying need to snoop and dig and _know_. Looking at it from her point of view, not learning as much about the situation as possible was not only undermining her – it put her and others in danger. It was idiotic. Here Granger was, one of the people closest to The Git Who Had More Luck Than Brains, dealing with someone from the enemy side she didn’t know was trustworthy… hell, she knew Draco _wasn’t_ trustworthy, that he had a history of brazenly screwing her over for purposes that were far from benign! Trying to pin him down to the last molecule like a toad was only logical for her. Sod it; not doing so endangered the lives of the people she cared about – and Granger was aware that _Draco Malfoy’s Exciting Adventures in Spying_ were bloody dangerous to them, she told him in the cave! If the roles were reversed and Draco was the one who had to put his trust in some rotten trollop who’d already conned him in the past, to risk capture and torture every time he Apparated to meet her, he would have learned everything he did and didn’t need to learn to make damn sure his Dunce Duo of moronic besties would stay safe! Well, if he were in Granger’s position, it was more likely he would make sure those two twats would never doom the wizarding world by reproducing. Come to think of it, he wouldn’t have made such an embarrassing choice of friends in the first place, but he supposed that was beside the point, which was that Granger had a personal stake in knowing _why_ Draco defected, dammit!

Unless...

There was one reason why she wouldn’t care to find out anything and everything about his motives, and that was if she assumed their cooperation wouldn’t last long enough for Draco to pose a threat; if she didn’t intend to give it a shot at all...

If the little stunt she pulled in the cave was far from her last attempt at revenge.

Draco swallowed. Working with a Hermione Granger who insisted on being difficult, pissy, and spiteful was one thing. Working with a Hermione Granger hell-bent on doing him in was an entirely different matter altogether.

And his foreboding only grew over the course of the next month.

The next time he contacted her was as soon as he could get away after the raid on one of Order’s bases of operations. Contrary to what the scouts had claimed, the place was abandoned which came as a surprise to everybody but Draco. What did surprise him, though, was that the one desk in the whole building was stuffed to the brim with documents that had no business being there: drafts of strategies, tactical plans, reports, even a fucking list of safe houses. Draco managed to take a look at some of the papers and gathered that it would be best to inform Granger what exactly her group of incompetent nitwits allowed the Dark Lord to know despite having been warned well in advance.

Granger looked him in the eye, completely unperturbed, thanked him and proceeded to sod off just like last time.

And this kept happening again and again. Draco would come to her with whatever his superiors deemed him worthy of knowing, only to find out that the Order had done precisely squat with the intelligence and let Dearth Eaters gain the upper hand over and over – and Granger appeared not to give a single toss.

Almost like she wasn’t passing the information on at all.

At least this had been Draco’s suspicion until the night a week ago when he and a small group of trainees were sent to check a former outpost that supposedly contained a hidden weapon which the previous raiding party overlooked and the Order considered seized. At least that was what the intelligence collected over the past month claimed.

And Granger knew all of this because Draco had told her a few days prior to have the thing removed.

What should have been a routine clean-up turned into a bloody ambush as they were met with rays of curses the moment they’d arrived. The place that _should_ have been deserted, based on the papers the Order let fall into enemy hands, was in fact crawling with Aurors.

The mission was an unmitigated disaster. Every single member of the party sustained injuries, ranging from moderately serious cuts to a severed arm. Three Death Eaters were captured, one of them the group’s leader. And a fresh recruit, a girl around Draco’s age, choked to death when one of the Aurors cast a curse that closed her throat with rapidly growing boils.

The rest barely got out.

As soon as Draco regrew the tip of his nose and found a plausible explanation as to what needed so urgently attending to when the senior officers at the headquarters were freaking out like a bunch of offended hippogriffs, he Apparated to the first meeting spot he could think of and called Granger. The second her giant head appeared in sight, he marched over to the damn bint and started laying into her, calling her every filthy insult he knew, and railing why in the ever-loving fuck she hadn’t seen fit to inform him that all the documents they’d been finding were actually plants whose only purpose was to lull Death Eaters into a false sense of security. And of particular interest to him, why had she omitted to tell him when the trap to capture a senior officer was going to be sprung so that Draco could get out of the bloody dodge?

And the twat had the audacity to sneer at him.

“My, my, Malfoy – did you by any chance think this was going to be an easy ride?” She stepped closer. “You give us a snippet here and there, largely worthless stuff that doesn’t put you into the spotlight if You-Know-Who finds out it was leaked, and we’re just supposed to clear the path for his pureblood Highness so that he doesn’t have to undertake any personal risk whatsoever?"

She was so close now their faces were nearly touching. “You of all people should be aware how badly placing one’s blind trust into another person tends to end."

And that was when Draco realized his chief problem wasn’t whether or not he was capable of appearing trustworthy to Granger and making her play ball.

His chief problem was whether or not he was good enough to survive her attempts at getting him killed.

Months of careful planning had gone to shit almost as soon as he began.

Well, there was no point bawling over a spilt vial of boner elixir; it was time to hastily slap together a plan which he liked to call How to Keep Both Granger and the Dark Lord Off Draco Malfoy’s Arse in Three Simple Steps:

 _Step number one: be discriminate with the information you share. Give Granger only what’s absolutely necessary to keep your after-war perks as a spy for the Order. She can’t use against you what she doesn’t know. Added benefit: the Dark Lord won’t be wondering why so many of his missions go to hell_.

 _Step number two: give Granger as little time to respond to your summons as possible, without rousing her suspicion. It’ll be hard for her to plot your murder and find an accomplice willing to help with hiding the corpse if she has only thirty minutes to do it. If she can’t make the rendezvous on time, that’s on her. Side note: consider meeting in more public places_.

 _Step number three: never again respond when that fucking coin warms up_.

So when the thing actually did warm up earlier this evening, giving him whopping fifteen minutes to meet Granger in the Santon “Ideal Dumping Ground” Downham again, Draco decided to forego whatever lovely curse straight out of Satan’s inflamed arsehole she prepared for him, and instead joined Crabbe on a voluntary clean-up mission in an old, verifiably abandoned Order base on the coast of North Devon.

The two-storey house looked as if a furious Veela swept through it. The main door was hanging askance from a single hinge. In the dark entrance hall, parts of wallpaper had been ripped off in thin strips and were now brushing the dusty floor. A few steps were missing from the narrow staircase as if somebody was searching for a secret cache there, and a large piece of the railing was sticking out at an odd angle. Where the door to the basement used to be, a huge hole was gaping. Cupboards in the kitchen to Draco’s right had been thrown down, and the floor was covered with fragments of glass and porcelain.

Draco nodded at Crabbe. “All right, Vince. Don’t know about you, but I’d like to get out of this dump before midnight.” He turned around to take a proper look at the derelict living room which was littered with overturned furniture, torn books, and smashed ornamental dishes. “You take the first floor and I’ll do..."

"Expeliarmus!"

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Feeling the wand leave his hand, Draco whipped around in surprise. Behind him in the entrance hall, lit only by the rays of moonlight coming in through the broken door and windows, Crabbe quickly reached out and caught the hurtling piece of wood in his left hand. Almost immediately, the confident expression on his face gave way to a wide-eyed look of pure befuddlement, and he turned to mutely stare at Draco, open-mouthed and looking like he couldn’t believe what he’d just done.

What the hell was going on?

“Vince?” Draco asked in the most amicable tone he could muster considering his growing sense of unsettlement. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Crabbe continued to gape at him like a troll who’d just been asked about its opinion on the Wenlock Method of Arithmancy.

Draco pinched his nose and let out a long breath. “Okay, Vince, you didn’t forget how to cast the disarming charm, well done. I’m really proud of you. Could you now give me back my w…”

“IgotsomequestionsIvebeenmeaningtoaskyou,” Crabbe suddenly bellowed, as if the words had been dislodged from his throat by a cannon.

Making a big show of covering his ear to hide the way he flinched, Draco mouthed a silent ow. “Sorry, Vince, I’m afraid I don’t speak rapid-fire merman. Could you please repeat that?”

The irritation that appeared on Crabbe’s face obviously made it easier for him to speak clearly, because he stated in a voice that broke no argument: “I got some questions I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

Adopting a haughty tone to make his friend realize how idiotic he was being, Draco drawled: “And taking my wand away was essential to asking them because…?” He took a leisurely step towards him. “I’ve been in the field for a while, so maybe the rules of etiquette for initiating a conversation chan…”

“Get down on your knees, Draco.”

That certainly pulled him up short.

He stopped, rooted to the spot in shock, and cast Crabbe a look of utter disbelief. “Seriously, Vince. I know you’ve never been the greatest conversationalist but this is pretty inept even for you, don’t you think?”

But Crabbe found his confidence and wouldn’t be deterred. “I told you to get down on your knees,” he repeated impatiently.

First the disarmament and now this? Not only would kneeling put Draco at even a bigger disadvantage than he already was at, but it also would be yet another in the long series of blows to his ego he’d sustained lately. Being treated like somebody’s bitch had become too a common occurrence in his life to allow this one as well. “Vince, there’s no need for this. Give me back my wand, calm down, and we can talk about whatever it is you want to talk about.”

And that was when Crabbe finally lost his patience. “On your fucking knees, now!” he roared, the bulging vein on his forehead visible even in the dim light.

Dropping all theatrics along with his dignity, Draco obediently lowered himself onto the dirty floor, overcome by a combination of alarm and anger. If there was one benefit to this new humiliation, he thought as he gave Crabbe the stink eye, it was that at least he could now openly show his true emotions. Being bossed around by the Dark Lord, by superiors, Mad-Eye, even Hermione “how does this murder stuff work” Granger? That was one thing. Crabbe, though? That went too bloody far.

Shooting Crabbe a look he hoped was scorching enough to melt the fat off of his bones, Draco said through clenched teeth: “OK, I’m kneeling and getting more pissed off by the minute. Happy? So can you finally tell me what this is about?”

What followed surprised him more than anything else that happened up to that point.

“Why aren’t we going on missions together anymore?” Crabbe asked sulkily.

The question was so unpredictably absurd and posed in such a petulant voice, Draco couldn’t help himself and burst out laughing. “What are you talking about, mate? We’re on a mission right this moment. Sure, it’s not a very glamorous one, but it needs to be done all the same, and you’re just wasting time.” Grinning widely, he winked at him. “So let’s get on with it and I might treat you to some flowers and a nice dinner once we’re done. After all, I _have_ been neglecting you a bit, buddy.”

Crabbe scowled, evidently not sharing his amusement. “The _Potter_ missions, Draco.”

And just like that, Draco felt the smile freeze on his lips. “Oh.”

This seemed to infuriate him. “Yeah, Draco, fucking oh. The Potter missions, remember those?” Crabbe yelled. “The ones you said were so damn important? The ones that would make us the darlings of the Dark Lord if we completed them? The ones that were _your_ idea?”

"Vince, calm down..."

“You worked me and Greg like a pair of bloody house elves, Draco! Two months, I heard nothing but Potter this, the Dark Lord will be so grateful that. The only thing we did after the graduation was going behind our superiors’ backs and trying to scout out Potter, or at least Weasley and the mudblood. We slept rough half the nights, in that ditch or another, hoping that the three of them would show up. And bugger me, you were right there the entire time, slumming it up with us – that’s how much you cared about catching them! We’ll bring them to the Dark Lord, you said, he’ll reward us, nothing –“ Crabbe threw up his hands dramatically and made air quotes – “‘those idiots at the headquarters are cooking up is as important as this!'"

Draco felt his shirt stick to his back as he started to sweat. This was heading into a very dangerous territory and he needed to derail Crabbe right the fuck now, or else there was no telling how this could end. “And you think there _is_ anything more vital than capturing Potter?” he shouted. “Potter, the one who has to be killed if the Dark Lord wants to declare victory? The one who singlehandedly fuels the entire resistance? The face of the damn Order?” Draco threw all he had into the contemptuous sneer he gave Crabbe next. “Do you want to go to the Dark Lord and personally tell him that you’d much rather sit on your fat arse and do some paperwork than actually win this war? Because let me tell you, he’ll be beside himself with joy when he learns you have this level of commitment to the cause.”

“We had them, Draco! We fucking had them!” Crabbe yelled and marched over to him, breathing angrily through his nose. “Or did you forget the last stake-out when they just blundered inside the house, pretty much gift-wrapped? It was three on three, and we had the moment of surprise on our side. It was perfect, it was bloody perfect. All we had to do was stay hidden and tie them up from distance, and boom, all the rewards we could have ever imagined would have been ours. Just like you wanted.”

No, Draco didn’t forget. It had been his third consecutive month as a full-time Death Eater and he was getting desperate. He had two full-scale battles under his belt, and more raids and random fights than he cared to count, yet after all that, there still hadn’t been a single sighting of Potter or Weasley or Granger – almost as if they weren’t involved in the combat at all. Lying in wait at deserted Order safe houses and praying to Merlin they’d make a show proved fruitless as well. At last, Draco remembered how hot-headed Harry “charge in first, use brain cells later” Potter could be, and devised a new plan of action. During an unexpected one-on-one run-in with Neville Longbottom, he briefly allowed him to gain the high ground and tried to buy his way out by letting it slip that there was something hidden in an uninhabited cottage at the edge of the Lower Slade reservoir; something very important to the Dark Lord personally.

The muppet obviously bought it and passed the information on.

When Draco saw Potter, Granger, and Weasley arrive at the cottage where mosquitoes had been eating him, Crabbe, and Goyle alive for the past three days, he had to supress the urge to run over to the trio and personally hug each and every one of them.

“We could have ended them right then and there,” Crabbe continued. “But what did you do? You took off like some barmy tosser, tackled Potter to the ground, and made a bolt for it.” He shook his head in disbelief. “A perfect opportunity, and you pissed it down your leg.”

Draco didn’t consider it pertinent or wise to correct Crabbe that while he indeed did run away, first he stuffed the message he’d been writing and rewriting for ages into Potter’s pocket. “What do you want me to say, Vince? I panicked, all right? I didn’t expect them to actually swallow the bait and come, and seeing Potter again, it brought up some really unpleasant memories. Or have you forgotten what happened the last time the wanker drew his wand on me?” When it came to bullshitting, Draco’s strategy had always been to cloak the lie in as much truth as possible. And his little encounter with Potter in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom truly did cause him some unpleasant dreams in the months that followed. “What did you expect me to do afterwards, bawl my eyes out because I got scared? Do you think it’s an easy thing to admit, that I’m somehow proud of it?”

But contrary to every single interaction they’d had over the past seven years, Crabbe adamantly refused to let Draco get his foot in the door and force the conversation to where he wanted it to go. “When was the last time we tried looking for Potter and his possy?” Crabbe asked. “Because from where I’m standing, it kinda seems like we’re done with it for good, and I wanna know why.”

Yes, on second thought, Draco had to admit that going cold turkey on the Potter hunt instead of weaning Crabbe and Goyle off of it slowly had been fairly idiotic. Who would have thought that getting wrapped up in Granger so much would come back to bite him in the arse in such a spectacular fashion?

“Merlin’s balls, Vince, we are still going after them; I just needed some time to think all of this through,” he implored. “I overestimated myself a bit back there, but I’ve been working on a plan ever since. Sure, I should have told you, and I’m sorry for screwing up but the end goal hasn’t changed. We’re doing the same thing as before and we _are_ going to catch them."

Crabbe’s expression hardened. “Wanna know what I think?” he asked and aimed his wand directly at Draco’s heart. “I think you’re working with them.”

It was as if a bucket of icy water landed at him. The air in the room got thinner, his shirt became completely drenched in sweat, and all sound was replaced by the ringing in his head, loud as a blasting siren, as if an amateur band of tone-deaf dwarves had decided to hold a concert in there.

This came way too soon, he barely got started, his cover couldn’t possibly have been blown already.

Draco forced himself to laugh, but it sounded hollow even to his own ears. “You cannot be serious, Vince.”

Crabbe pulled the same face as that one time when Draco insulted his mother’s cooking. “I can’t? OK, let’s see: first, you make it seem like there’s nothing more important in the universe than catching Potter. Then you draw attention to us for no reason that I can see, and piss away the perfect opportunity to actually catch him. You no longer give a shit about getting him, but you do keep disappearing to Merlin knows where. And all of a sudden, the Order kicks us right in the bollocks for the first time in months.” The wand in his hand twitched. “Did I miss anything?” he growled.

 _Steer him away from that, steer him as far away from that as humanly possible._ “So let me get this straight,” Draco deadpanned, struggling to maintain the look of offended incredulity in his eyes. “You see me cut and run, something I’ve done many times before, and what you gather from it is that I’m somehow secretly working with Potter?” He gestured widely. “Have you met me? I hate the bloody git!” _Always bury the lie in a big pile of truth._ “I’ve hated him since the moment we met! If there’s one thing on this earth I really enjoy, it’s seeing that pompous smarmy arsehole suffer. So why the fuck would I defy the Dark Lord in order to help him of all people?”

But Crabbe had yet to acknowledge the persuasiveness of his arguments. “You were awfully chummy with Granger at school, weren’t you, Draco?” he countered smugly. “Enough for Pansy to throw a fit or two. Dunno, maybe you decided that you actually like rolling in the mud.”

 _Thank fucking Merlin, halleluiah_. “Vince, don’t tell me you dipped into your mum’s romance novels again,” Draco smirked, determined to exploit this opening to the fullest. Who would have believed that knowing about his friend’s disgustingly mushy side would one day come in handy like this? “Don’t say anything, I can already see it in my head. _The Pureblood and the Mudblood: Blood Merges_ ,” he declaimed theatrically, chuckling when he saw Crabbe’s cheeks turn dark. “Honestly, Vince, turn on your brain for a second. I know it’s somewhere in that big head of yours. Granger’s just some annoying mudblood. Snape forced her on me for one school year three years ago, and I’ve been grateful to be rid of her ever since. That’s all. As for Pansy, she was once convinced that I was cheating on her with Bulstrode because we talked about Quidditch a couple of times.” He pointed to himself ostentatiously. “Not meaning to brag, but she wasn’t exactly rational when it came to this package of perfection.”

Noticing a flicker of uncertainty appear on Crabbe’s face, Draco adopted a strict tone and pushed harder. “Look, Vince, I can handle you being a moron and jumping to the stupidest conclusions imaginable, but if you picture me ripping Granger’s clothes off in the moonlight, I don’t think I’ll manage to take you seriously ever again.”

For a moment, it seemed like Crabbe would snap out of it. But then he firmly gripped his wand and said in a steely voice: “Yeah, I don’t think you have to worry about that anymore, Draco.”

And like a ton of bricks, the reality of his situation finally hit him for the very first time.

He was in an abandoned house, kneeling on the ground, disarmed and facing an angry opponent who was dead-set on viewing him as an enemy.

This wasn’t innocent fun anymore.

“You’re a traitor, Draco. I know you are. You hobnob with Potter and the Order. I can just feel it in my bones.”

He needed to distract him somehow, make him turn around and shift his hound-dog focus to something else. Then, Draco would jump up from the floor, tackle him, and take both of the wands. After altering Crabbe’s memories so that he’d think all three of them had a discussion where they decided to give up the search for Potter for good, Draco would make damn sure to deal in the same way with Goyle.

“You do know how the Dark Lord handles traitors, don’t you? You’ll be begging for the snake long before he’s done with you.” The dreamy expression in his eyes sent shivers down Draco’s spine. “Hell, I might even get the reward you’ve been promising me.”

Seizing the opportunity to scribble all over the rosy picture Crabbe had so lovingly painted for himself, Draco blurted out: “Reward you for what exactly? Wasting his time with baseless accusations that can’t be proven? Can you imagine how furious he’ll be to find out that some expendable little nobody is making shit up about one of his most valued soldiers? You may think that the cards are dealt in your favour, Vince, but I’m warning you: you have nothing and the Dark Lord will realize it at once. Do you really want to go before him and challenge the one Death Eater who’s done more for him than anybody else?”

He expected a lot of things, but it sure as hell didn’t occur to him that Crabbe would bend over and burst out in a heartfelt belly laugh. “Most valued soldier? Are you kidding me, Draco? Look at yourself!” He wiped away the tears of laughter with the back of his hand. “You’re as much an expendable nobody as I am! Tell me, how does the Dark Lord show that he values you? By chucking you into the same mincer as the rest of us? By giving you the same shitty jobs he gives to me? Sod it, even your mum is treated better than you, and she’s done precisely fuck all to deserve it. And your father…”

“I don’t give a toss that you disarmed me, Vince,” Draco snarled. “You mention my father again, and I _am_ going to knock your teeth out.” This was his limit, this was his absolute bloody limit. He could kneel here all night, being insulted by the jumped-up arse-licker till the sun came out, and he’d take it, but he’d sooner bugger himself with Finnigan’s exploding wand than talk about his fucking father.

Crabbe shook his head in amusement. “The Dark Lord doesn’t value you for shit. If I killed you right now and never told him, I doubt he’d notice you’re gone.”

“Oh really?” Draco sneered. “In that case allow me to refresh your memory, my friend – I’m the one who got Dumbledore, something he himself couldn’t do. That may be some tiny forgettable detail in your eyes, but I assure you, the Dark Lord remembers it very well.”

Crabbe raised his eyebrows. “No, Draco. _Snape’s_ the one who got Dumbledore. And he’s treated accordingly. You don’t see _him_ crammed in some shithole with thirty other people, no, no, no: he’s snatched himself Hogwarts and lives there like a bloody king. He’s even a part of the Dark Lord’s council and sits at his right hand!” Crabbe snorted in disgust. “You didn’t achieve crap, beside shitting your pants and failing like you always do.”

“While your contribution consisted of loitering around in front of the Room of Requirement, disguised as a little girl!” Draco shouted. “Bravo, mate, real irreplaceable stuff right there. Not sure how you’re calculating this, but in my book, that still puts you well below me on the importance ladder.” He was fully aware that stoking Crabbe’s anger was the last thing he should be doing at the moment, but Crabbe seemed terribly sure that he had it all figured out, and Draco needed to nip that certainty in the bud immediately, no matter what.

“Now that I think about it, didn’t Granger help you with those scales you dropped to alert me that one time?” he continued snidely. “Maybe you’re just trying to shift the blame to me when it’s in fact you who’s been working with her. After all, she was soo nice to you. I mean, I got about as much evidence for any of this as you do, so why the hell shouldn’t I also get to present my moronic theory pulled straight out of the indisputable crevices of my own arse!” Draco yelled as loudly as he could.

He realized how much he miscalculated the second the last word left his mouth.

“You know, you’ve always done this to me,” Crabbe said with an air of disturbing calmness. “You’ve always treated me as no different from all those mudbloods and blood-traitors, talking to me as if I was some worthless piece of shit that got stuck to your shoe. All those things I did, and still not an ounce of respect from you.”

Draco gulped. “Vince, you know it’s not like th…”

“No, it’s precisely like that. You’ve always thought you’re better than me, and why exactly? Because your father is better connected than mine? Because your family is richer? Because the Malfoys belong to the sacred twenty-eight? But none of that is your own, Draco, those are all things other people accomplished. Strip that away and what’s left? A bloody coward and a bully. Well, guess what? It got stripped away, and now everybody can see how pathetic you truly are. You’re the one on the ground and I’m the one who has the upper hand.”

This was bad, this was really fucking bad.

Ignoring the stabbing pain that made itself at home in his knees, Draco was feverishly trying to find a way, any way out of this goddamn mess. He was alone, and no one was coming to the rescue. He had a method of contacting Granger, but reaching inside his pocket for the fake galleon when Crabbe was watching him like a sodding hawk was out of the question. Plus, he would have needed his wand to change the place of issue to let her know where he was, and his inability to get to it was the crux of the entire problem. The same held true for the personal Portkey in his other pocket. While Draco certainly could chance it and quickly trigger it, hoping that Crabbe would be too slow to react, all he would achieve would be taking the conflict to a new location, one to which Crabbe would soon follow as he owned the exact same standard-issue Portkey leading to the exact same place.

He’d used every angle he could think of to convince Crabbe that his suspicions were unfounded and ridiculous, that the best he could hope for was the Dark Lord laughing him out of the room if he happened to be in a good mood, but nothing worked and Draco ran out of options.

All except one.

He’d have to come clean and reveal himself as a spy for the Order.

It was an extremely dangerous, last contingency plan, one Draco had hoped he’d never have to put into place because while it was very high-risk, it didn’t carry the corresponding high reward. First he’d have to convince Crabbe that he wasn’t _actually_ spying for the Order; that he took the initiative and became a triple agent for Death Eaters without the Dark Lord’s knowledge. Then, he’d have to convince the _Dark Lord_ of the same thing, and while Draco was a pretty skilled occlumens, the idea of lying to a psychopathic murderer about something as vital as this left him with anything but fuzzy feelings. If he pulled that off – which was a big if –, he would have to contact Moody and Granger and talk them into agreeing that he in fact wasn’t damaged goods and still had valuable things to offer, even though he managed to screw up fantastically not even two months into his new job. And after that, there came the part where he’d kindly ask them to pretty please give up some token information that he could feed to the Dark Lord in order to maintain what measly bits of his cover remained.

It was a shitty, horrible plan that had a very little probability of succeeding, and if it did, it would make working as a spy for the Order borderline impossible – but it beat being fed to a snake by a fucking mile.

Draco opened his mouth to speak, but the words became stuck in his throat when he saw Crabbe’s expression and understood there was no point in trying any longer.

This was so not about him being a traitor.

“Vince,” he said quietly, his voice breaking. “We’re friends."

“Are we?” Crabbe challenged bitterly. “Greg is my friend, I know that. He’s never made me feel like a moron who’s too dumb to breathe. You on the other hand…”

“Please,” Draco implored. “You’re right, I am a disgusting person, Vince, I am. There are times I repel even myself. I treated you horribly, you and Greg as well, and neither of you deserved any of it. But Merlin, Vince, do you honestly believe I should die for being a bad friend?”

Crabbe gave him a disturbing little smile. “You know, I never realized it could be this fun to hear you beg.” _Good, that is good, keep him talking, don’t let him shut up. As long as he’s blabbering, you can find a way to distract him and get to your wand._ “And yeah, Draco, I kinda think you should.”

Out of nowhere, Draco felt a searing pain flash through his right hip, and he fell to the ground, crying out in agony. The burning was so sudden and sharp it felt like being subjected to the Cruciatus curse – except that when he made himself look up, he saw that Crabbe was gaping at him with his mouth hanging wide open, wand pointed uselessly towards the ceiling.

“What are you doing?” Crabbe peeped, sounding frightened by the sudden loss of control. “Stop, stop it now, I’m telling you!”

And then Draco realized what was going on.

Gritting his teeth, he jammed his hand into his right pocket, forced his fingers to close around the red-hot galleon that was burning him through the fabric, yanked his hand out, and hurled the damn coin across the room. Sweet relief engulfed his senses at once like a liquid balm, only to be followed by a violent throbbing in his fingers and thigh as his body complained at having been put through what must have been first-degree burns at least.

“What was it? What was it that you threw away?” Crabbe demanded hysterically, and moved Draco’s wand so that he now held it in his right hand alongside his own. “Accio! Accio!”

He stuck his left hand out and the scorching galleon flew directly into it.

Draco knew he wouldn’t get another chance.

Springing up from the floor, he set out running towards the entrance hall like a mad man and flung himself against his screaming friend, pulling both of them to the ground. He grabbed Crabbe’s left wrist, and focusing all his strength on squeezing the fingers into a tight fist, he pushed the hot coin deeper into the already scorched flesh, Crabbe’s wailing loud in his ears. Draco blindly grabbled for the right wrist, and once he felt the wands under his fingertips, he seized them and tugged with all his might. But even though the pain must have been unbearable at that point, Crabbe wouldn’t budge.

“Let go off them!” Draco puffed and tried to land a kick in Crabbe’s shin to make him loosen his hold on the wands.

But the sound of his voice must have brought Crabbe back to his senses, because the next thing Draco knew, his friend turned towards him, raised himself up a bit, and head-butted him with so much power it felt like colliding head on with a speeding Hogwarts Express.

Draco’s vision went black and his body slackened, the grip he had on Crabbe just a second ago gone completely. He noticed being rolled away and unceremoniously hitting the floor, but he couldn’t care less. Peculiar lightness settled inside his body, simultaneously making him feel like throwing up and falling asleep. Tingles were running up and down along every inch of his skin. Draco’s tongue was heavy in his mouth, and his ears were stuffed shut with cotton which only the distant noise of someone whimpering piteously managed to penetrate.

And then the far-away moaning gave way to an infuriated roar right above him.

Draco’s eyes snapped open, the fog that descended on his mind lifting immediately.

 _“You bloody arsehole!”_ Crabbe screamed, his eyes bulging in fury. He waved his wand and Draco knew this was it, he’d recognize the motion that produced the killing curse anytime, concussion or not, this was happening, this was really fucking happening, he wasn’t even twenty and yet he was going to be murdered in a fucking hovel by his best friend and left to rot, never to be found by anyone other than a bunch of fucking maggots and he was too weak to do anything about it this wasn’t real this couldn’t be real stuff like this didn’t just happen you didn’t suddenly find yourself staring your death in the face with no preparation whatsoever but shit Burbage did she did too and he was going to meet the same fate and Merlin mother, he would never see his mother ever again...

"Avada Kedavra!"

The hall was flooded with the sound of whooshing as death came rushing for him, and the last thing Draco saw before curling up into a ball and covering his head with his arms was the cold green light illuminating Crabbe’s head like a halo.

Deafening silence set in which Draco supposed was appropriate for the process of dying, but as he kept lying on the floor, waiting for the darkness to come and gobble him up, he noticed the strangest thing.

He didn't lose consciousness.

He could think.

Which meant he couldn't be dead.

Baffled, Draco peaked out through the gap between his left arm and forearm to see how for the love of Merlin’s dingleberries he could still be alive despite having been hit by the deadliest spell known to man.

Above him, Crabbe stood stiff and unmoving, his right hand lifted in the air as if he was about to cast the killing curse any moment now. Shock was etched on his ashen face, but his eyes looked empty, fishlike and void of any signs that an intelligent mind was living behind them.

And then he lost balance, tipped over, and started falling forwards.

With the last remnants of his strength, Draco raised himself on his elbows and quickly scooted to the side, watching incredulously as his dead friend hit the floor next to him with a heavy thud.

Tearing his gaze away from the body, Draco quickly looked up and was met with a sight that was simultaneously the most beautiful and terrifying thing he’d encountered over the past eighteen years of his life.

A couple of feet from where Crabbe had been a mere while ago, Hermione Granger stood in all her bushy-haired glory, wand drawn and raised, holding her own fake galleon between the fingers of her left hand, her face wearing an expression that made her look like an enraged goddess of death.

Draco never thought he could be this relieved, joyful, and scared out of his wits at the same time.

The image of a powerful witch in control was short-lived, though. Almost at once, the look of wrath was replaced by one of confusion, and then horror as Granger’s eyes went wide in her skull and she glanced uncertainly from the corpse in front of her to Draco and then back to the corpse, started to gasp for air and then hyperventilate outright, swaying all the while.

As she bent over and began to vomit, Draco figured that out of all the misjudgements he’d made over the past four months and a half, Hermione Granger having the stomach for cold-blooded killing may have been the biggest.


	3. Chapter 3

Oh God, oh God, dear God she killed him, she killed him, Crabbe was dead, he was dead, he was lying only a few feet away from her, completely motionless because he was dead, he would never ever walk or breathe or talk again because he was dead, he was dead because she killed him, he was dead, _she_ killed him, oh God how could she have killed him, she killed him…

Spitting out a bit of bile on the floor, Hermione slid down onto her knees and rested her forehead against the wall. She forced herself to glance in the direction where the body was spread out like a skin rug, and felt another wave of vomit rise up her throat as she was smacked in the face with the reality of what she’d done. Christ, she could have stunned him, bound him, disarmed him, made him forget what he was doing and why, but for some reason when she saw him swing his arm and perform the motion that impressed itself too deeply on her mind to ever be forgotten, it was as if her hand repeated the movement all by itself and the killing curse became the only spell she could think of. In fact, there hadn’t been any thinking involved at all, not really. One moment she had been hiding in the corner of the entrance hall, watching the fight unfold and hoping Malfoy would make the best of the opportunity she’d given him, and then the very next she heard herself scream the words that would send Vincent Crabbe to the world beyond.

He had been a person, with thoughts and dreams and wishes and fears, with people who loved him, who considered him a part of their lives, but that was gone now. All that was left was a body, a worthless meat sack, sixteen stones worth of bones, muscles, fat, organs, blood, faeces, a dead brain which would never again produce a single spark that would turn all of this into a human being, and Merlin, she couldn’t breathe, her head was getting dizzy, holding herself upright was becoming impossible, she was in a desperate need of air but the corpse was too close, sucking all the oxygen out of the room, and despite panting like a rabid dog, Hermione couldn’t get a single gulp in, she couldn’t breathe, she would suffocate, she’d soon join Crabbe and maybe that was what she deserved for being a murderer because she killed him, oh God, he was dead and she killed him…

Suddenly, Hermione felt two hands grip her under the shoulders and weakly lift her up, and she shrieked in terror, flailing like a woman gone mad, convinced for a second that it was Crabbe, that he’d risen from the dead and came to drag her away to whatever hell she’d sent him. But then the hands turned her harshly around and she saw it was only Malfoy – looking like he’d collapse at any moment, horribly pale, eyes popped out in fright and sweat-drenched hair plastered to his face, but wonderfully alive and not even a little bit deceased.

Before Hermione could say or do anything to alert him to this stunning revelation, he took her by the wrist and tugged, pulling her with him towards the main door, towards where the corpse lay. Whimpering, she dug her heels in, not wanting to get any closer, but Malfoy grasped her wrist with both hands and yanked at it so hard she lost balance and flew right into his arms. Grabbing her by the waist, he stumbled with her around Crabbe’s body and led both of them outside, under the night sky and into the open which was blissfully free of any evidence that Hermione’s kill count had become nonzero.

They made it only a couple of yards before Malfoy gasped, his legs buckled, and he keeled over. Hermione, unsteady on her feet herself and experiencing grainy vision at that point, realized too late what was happening, and before she could even think of freeing herself out of his hold, the shaky ground was snatched from under her and she followed Malfoy down into the wet grass.

Later when she thought back to it, she couldn’t remember how long they’d been lying there. It felt like minutes and hours at the same time, and they definitely fell asleep at one point, but when she returned to the forest cottage, Harry and Ron weren’t freaking out because of her being late, rather because she looked like a person put through the wringer. All Hermione knew with absolute certainty, then and afterward, was that the grass was soft, the breeze crisp and fresh on her face, and whenever she shivered under the onslaught of the autumn chill, the strange cocoon around her got tighter and warmer, convincing her to rest a little while longer.

As her mind got clearer and clearer, she noticed several things. One, her mouth tasted like a bus. Two, while she was still exhausted, sitting upright no longer seemed like the stuff of dreams. And three, there was a hand feebly clutching her stomach, an arm draped across her clavicle, and a long hard body pressed alongside her own.

Draco Malfoy was spooning her.

“Get off of me,” Hermione rasped, too weak to shove him away.

“Tired,” he murmured, his cracked voice a testament to how knackered he must have truly been.

“Well, untire yourself,” she said, and when his only reaction was to slowly drop the lower arm from her chest so that she could get up, Hermione huffed in annoyance and removed the other one from her belly. Placing both palms on the grass to support herself, she carefully turned onto her stomach, raised herself on her knees and then sat back on her feet.

Watching her with hooded eyes, Malfoy seemed like he was perfectly fine with the idea of lying there until dawn. “Could do with some Invigoration Drought,” he forced out and wiggled his outstretched fingers as if he expected her to produce the required vial without delay.

“Do I look like an apothecary to you?” Hermione retorted. Carrying Dittany had been a sensible precaution, but walking around prepared for every contingency on earth would have just been paranoid. “Besides, you shouldn’t drink any potions until someone examines your head. That was some bash you got.”

Instead of answering, Malfoy closed his eyes and immediately opened them again.

“And you shouldn’t Apparate, either. Do you have any other way to get back?”

“Portkey,” he said, confirming her theory from earlier. Groaning, he tentatively pushed himself up to a sitting position, with short interruptions to test how much he could handle at any single moment, and cautiously rubbed the back of his neck. “Got some questions, first.” He craned his neck to the side and cracked it, pain flickering across his face. “Shit.” For a second, Hermione was convinced he was about to throw up, and shuffled away a bit. “Why don’t you start with how you found me?”

She looked over his shoulder to where the main door was gaping like a black hole, waiting to suck her back in. “This is… this was our house,” she stammered, checking herself before she would reveal anything that was better kept secret. “Not that it matters… It doesn’t, really, I mean… that’s not how I found you, I just…”

It was just that seeing the building for the first time in over six months, Hermione’s immediate thought was that if someone asked her to pinpoint the precise moment when it all started going to hell, she wouldn't hesitate before picking this damn house. It had been their fourth shelter, after the Burrow, Grimmauld Place, and the Order base they left voluntarily once Harry made the judgement that contrary to his original hopes, Order’s resources were not going to help them with the Horcrux hunt. Despite this, they felt like they were on a roll: the mystery of Regulus Black was solved, they pulled off the insane stunt at the ministry and retrieved his locket, and the Order was on top of things, organizing and creating a well-connected network of fighters, bases, infirmaries, supply rooms, and safe houses all over Britain with an efficiency worthy of a professional military.

It seemed like nobody could touch them.

And then someone talked. No one ever found out who or how they even managed to compromise the Fidelius Charm, if it was an act of betrayal or a genuine mistake that had far-reaching consequences, or if that person was even still alive. All anyone knew for sure was that despite putting every piece of protective magic imaginable on the North Devon safe house, and although the trio took a great care not to draw attention to themselves, one evening the main door was smashed open and a veritable file of Death Eaters poured in, breaking everything in sight and looking for the one boy who stood a chance at defeating their master.

Standing up and fighting was pointless. But as the trio barricaded itself in an upstairs room, hid under Harry's cloak, and then mounted his broom to fly behind the anti-disapparition line Death Eaters placed around the house, they realized with horror that while they were completely cut away, Regulus’ locket was lying in an unsecured side table in the hallway downstairs, free to be seized should anyone chance upon it. Having no other choice, once outside they Apparated to the nearest Order base, hastily assembled a haphazard rescue party, and came back to save the Horcrux, with little plan of attack to speak of.

Three Order members died that night, laying their lives for the teenagers they considered their chief hope at victory, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione moved to the current safe house, as protected and removed from civilization as possible. The only people who knew its location were professor Moody as the secret keeper, and a handful of the most trusted from Dumbledore’s Army as secondary keepers, for good measure bound by Mad-Eye with an Unbreakable Vow to never reveal it to anyone in any way.

After this, they were no longer on a roll. The hunt for Horcurxes arrived at a dead end, one from which there appeared to be no escape. The Order was greatly affected by the possibility of a traitor operating in its midst which took a considerable toll on its effectiveness and success rate. Harry, Ron, and Hermione came to an agreement to never leave the locket unattended if it could at all be helped, and its constant influence served to highlight and widen all the hair’s breadth cracks in their little group they hadn’t noticed before, most recently with Ron and his growing fear for his family.

Although Malfoy didn’t need to know it, Hermione strongly believed that his not-really-a-defection was one of the few good things that happened to the Order of Phoenix in over half a year.

“Fascinating,” Malfoy snorted, pulling Hermione back from her reverie. “How about you actually answer me, then?”

Deciding that she had had enough of him taking the wheel and controlling the conversation, Hermione challenged: “You didn’t respond when I summoned you.”

“Still failing to grasp the meaning of ‘answer’, I se…”

“I placed a tracking charm on your galleon,” she cut in. Malfoy looked up sharply which, judging from the face he pulled, earned him another surge of pain. “Switched it with mine when you weren't paying attention and then slipped the enchanted one back to you the next time we met up. I needed a way to tail you if it ever started to seem like you were turning your back on us. It works sort of like a Portkey, only repeatable; the coins are interlinked by design, and if I trigger mine, it takes me to wherever you are.” What Hermione didn’t tell him was that the charm was anything but failproof. It could transport the caster only to places free of protective magic. If Malfoy had decided to take a stroll around the Hogwarts grounds, for example, all that Hermione would have achieved by triggering the coin was maybe, _maybe_ get a hazy glimpse at where he was before being thrown back to her place of departure, feeling like she’d slammed into a brick wall. There was no reason to tell him this, though. Better to let him think she could spy on him anytime, anywhere.

“Figures,” he deadpanned. “Why would I expect anything different?”

“Beats me,” she shrugged. “So why didn’t you come when I called you?”

Malfoy fixed her with a glare. “I had this very convincing theory that you were trying to murder me.” When she gaped at him mutely, wide-eyed and perplexed, he continued: “You might say your failure to inform me that I was walking into a trap last week made me wonder whether you were attempting to put me into a situation where I would croak.”

Oh. _Oh_. Hermione hadn’t considered what her lack of prior warning might have looked like to his eyes. All she had been concerned with when she learned about the successful Order mission was the fact that Moody had left her completely out in the cold and that it resulted in the entirely predictable scenario of Malfoy choosing her as a target of his rather understandable anger. “I didn’t know about the ambush before you told me.”

“Bullshit!” he lashed out and turned swiftly to face her, paying for it right away. Groaning, he lowered his head onto one knee and started massaging his temples to relieve the pain.

“I didn’t, honestly!” If Hermione had any idea, she would have warned him. It wasn’t fair, being accused of something this patently ridiculous. Did he bother to think it through at all? What would she have gained by ridding the Order of the only contact it had on You-Know-Who’s side? They may not have been friendly with each other, but concluding from her less than cuddly demeanour that she was out to get him was simply absurd.

“Cut the crap, Granger,” he growled, eyes pointed to the grass. “You’re in the Order, you work with Moody, so yes, you knew. All I want is for you to tell me why you didn’t see fit to warn me beforeh...”

“We’re not in the Order!” Hermione interrupted. Since Malfoy only rubbed his temples more vigorously instead of looking sharply up like the previous two times, he apparently came to the conclusion that it was best not to show his surprise by sudden head movements. “I mean… yes, we are, but we’re not… we don’t do… the strategy, planning, the fighting… that’s Moody and the others… Harry, Ron, and I, we… we’re on a separate mission.” She shrugged with forced indifference. “I just relay to Moody whatever you give me. What he does with it, that I find out mostly from you.”

And then an unpleasant thought occurred to her. “You’re of course free to go the direct route,” she continued, the nervous lump in her throat making it difficult to speak clearly. “You know, get together with Moody, but… I mean, I don’t mind doing this… Moody’s busy and I have lots of time.” Hermione stopped, realizing she said more than she’d intended in her effort to dissuade him from choosing the actual leader over a dispensable messenger. _For Merlin’s sakes, Hermione: who has lots of time when on a special mission in the middle of war?_

Going by Malfoy’s expression, he was asking himself the same thing. Before he could comment that she seemed awfully keen on meeting up with him, Hermione quickly attempted to save her dignity by adopting the same unapproachable persona she’d used to deal with the brat over the past six weeks: “And anyway, the probability of you staying alive in your current line of work is very low no matter what I personally do, Malfoy. Trying to kill you myself would be a needless waste of energy.”

Head still on one knee, Malfoy slowly raised his eyes and gave her a baleful stare.  Forcing herself to repay him in kind, Hermione silently dared him to argue with her and say otherwise. But he simply straightened up, put his hand on his forehead, and asked in an annoyed tone: “So onto my second question – why are you here? Not that I’m complaining, given the circumstances, but still. What was so important that it couldn’t wait? Do Potter and Weasley no longer cut it when it comes to your need to be an utter bitch?”

Irritated, Hermione puffed up. “Well, after the embarrassing tantrum you threw last time, I thought you might appreciate learning that your base would be under attack tonight,” she said haughtily, enjoying the look of shock in his eyes. “Yes, Malfoy, the man we captured sang like a canary and evidently disclosed some pretty useful information. But hey, if you changed your mind and would like to keep stuff like this a nice surprise in the future, just say so.”

Once again, Malfoy didn’t need to have the full picture. He didn’t need to know how shaken Hermione was when he described in vivid detail how brutally the Aurors struck against what were essentially child soldiers, or that it had been the first time she ever compared the actions of the Order to those of Death Eaters in an unfavourable light. He didn’t need to know that the very next thing she did after leaving him was not go home, but straight to professor Moody and ask him in her most McGonagall voice to please keep her informed about any future operations that might put their only spy in You-Know-Who’s camp in danger; after all, Draco Malfoy could be creditted with the success of the latest mission, and it would therefore be a great shame to waste such an asset.

And he definitely didn’t need to know how worried she was when professor Moody contacted her earlier this evening and announced that since Order’s scouts reported that the monitored Death Eater bases were going to be moved in a matter of hours, the planned battle would have to be fought sooner than originally anticipated. Unless Miss Granger was justified in believing Mr. Malfoy had exhausted all the intelligence he could give to the Order, it would be wise to alert him to this new development. After promptly calling Malfoy to Santon Downham and spending the following thirty minutes by anxiously pacing to and fro with no response, Hermione was not ashamed to activate the galleon’s tracking feature without taking into account the risks to her person.

Not having anything else to add, she finished: “The fighting is probably still going on, so I’d wait at least an hour before using the Portkey if I were you. With your injuries, claiming that you passed out won’t seem implausible.”

Malfoy sat on the grass for about a minute, unmoved and observing her intently as if she were some fascinating insect. Then, he gingerly got up without saying another word and set off back towards the house, disappearing inside. When he emerged after a while, holding his wand in one hand and the galleon in the other, he turned around in the doorway and gazed into the darkness for what seemed like an eternity.

And then all of a sudden Malfoy jerked his wand arm and the inside of the entrance hall once more became illuminated with cold green light.

Hermione had to cover her mouth with both hands to choke back the scream that formed in her throat. “W-what… w-why…?” she stammered out when she gathered her wits a little.

Malfoy turned to face her. “Crabbe volunteered me and himself for a clean-up mission, but his actual intention was to take revenge on me for some personal stuff I did. He disarmed me and nearly beat me to death, but in the end I managed to get to my wand and kill him in self-defence, as the reverse spell can prove. Then I fainted. I was worried that I might splinch by Apparating, so I used my Portkey to get to a safe house. From there, I contacted my superiors and found out for the first time that several of our bases had been attacked.” Moving away from the doorway, he deadpanned: “What, Granger, did you believe something different happened here?”

Giving a nod of approval, Hermione carefully got up from the ground and rubbed at the grass stains on the knees of her jeans. “Well, I see you have things under control. Unless you want me to deal with something else for you, I’m going to dash.” When there was no answer, she took out her wand and turned her back on him.

And then a strained voice spoke up behind her. “Granger, wait… I…” Malfoy sounded as if he didn’t want to continue, but some deeply buried urge took the option of shutting up away from him. “Why did you do it?”

Hermione stopped as if chained to the spot. He didn’t need to specify what it was that she did. The truth was, she acted entirely on instinct when she killed Crabbe. But thinking back to it, there _was_ a reason why she reacted so instinctively; why it never occurred to her to let her personal distaste for Malfoy take hold; why charging in and protecting him seemed like the only course of action available.

Unlike Crabbe, Malfoy tried. His efforts may have been motivated entirely by self-interest and may not have amounted to much in the grand scheme of things, but he did actually try. And in the end, it had been this tiny bit of effort that made all the difference in her eyes.

Deeming it below her to turn around, Hermione casually remarked over her shoulder: “Surprised as I may be, Malfoy, you’ve proved yourself useful. That’s all. I wouldn’t read too much into it if I were you.” She gave an indifferent shrug. “The moment your usefulness stops, you’re on your own.”

When he spoke after a couple of seconds of heavy silence, his voice was filled with even more confusion than before. “But… how can you do this, work with me if you don’t know whether you can trust me?” She heard him take a couple of hesitant steps in her direction. “Don’t you want to know _why_ I left the Dark Lord?”

Without thinking about it, Hermione slowly turned around and took in his strangely open face, the wide eyes, the slight forward lean in his posture as if he was hanging on her words, eager to understand.

As soon as Malfoy’s vetting had been completed, professor Moody came to her, claiming there were certain things she should be told if her cooperation with Mr. Malfoy was to go off without a hitch. However, she cut him off immediately, saying that all she needed to learn was whether Malfoy posed any danger or if she would be undergoing any significant risk by meeting up with him. When Moody said no, Hermione concluded this was more than enough for her.

As Hermione saw it, the main problem lied in the fact that while she was undoubtedly the one person in the Order who understood best how Malfoy functioned, and was therefore best equipped to handle him, she was also the one most compromised due to her tendency to sympathize with him. When Hermione looked at Malfoy after everything he’d done, even though she was aware her sentiments were putting those she loved in jeopardy, she couldn’t help but be reminded of the snobby little prat who reached over their study desk and handed her his last chocolate frog.

She would remember the boy and feel sorry for the man.

And so in her mind, the less she knew, the less personal she allowed their meetings to be, the more certain it was that Malfoy wouldn’t get a chance to do what he’d always done so well which was wreak havoc on her life.

Hermione looked him square in the eye and said, in as detached a tone as she could muster: “But I do know why, Malfoy. You may have constructed some elaborate motive so that you’d be able to look at yourself in the mirror, but deep down, we both know it’s nothing more complicated than you being a spineless coward. You want to sit on two chairs at the same time and pick one based solely on what’s best for you. There’s no values involved, nothing that would dictate your actions other than self-preservation. That’s the one thing about you I _can_ trust.” She gripped her wand tightly. “So please, spare me your made up sob stories and just do your job.”

As Hermione turned at the spot and Apparated to the edge of the protective line surrounding her, Harry’s, and Ron’s tiny forest cottage, she couldn’t shake the feeling that Malfoy seemed genuinely wounded by her words.


End file.
